Making home made butter 23th of April

Our group made homemade butter.

This idea came from the conversation of the last Friday with the children.

Two children made me cupcakes with the play dough and then a child said "I know how to make cupcakes." And the child asked to make cupcakes together at CM.

I said " we wish I could but I think we don't have butter here today" and then I remembered when I was little I made butter from cow milk.

We started to think about how we could do this together.

We watched videos and then made plans for the ingredients.

We poured the whipping cream into a glass jar, put the lid on and shook it.

The children thought we could make it quickly but it took a long time. 

It was interesting that the children noticed how the sound created by the shaking changed as the butter was being made. 

With all our effort we eventually had butter and saw how the solids and liquids separated.

We added salt and then tasted it with toast.
It was yummy!

We thought our butter is very tasty, we shared other children, too.  They liked it as well.


The children noticed that this way of making butter takes so long that a family would not have such time to do this, so the machines that are used no to make butter make our lives easier.

This raises the question about how we often want to make our lives easier and what cost it has to us.
Is everything that is faster or easier actually what makes our lives rich???

Then and Now - telephone-

In this inquiry, we will explore past and present through our unity of inquiry titled "Then and Now".

We started by looking at modes of communication and how they have changed over time, particularly, cellphones.

We added a rotary telephone to the drama area and the children happily made phone calls to one other as they practiced turning the wheel.

Our group made two types of telephones.

We made rotary phone and a "cell" phone.

Everyone was very excited with this technology.
It was wonderful to watch them make their phones unique through the images they added to make their phones beautiful.

They talked about what they noticed about their cell phones their parents carried.

 

 

We found all the ways that the phones were different. We talked about weight and size and processes for using these communication tools.

 

 

We also talked about how technology has changed and we are beginning to talk about how technologies makes our lives easier. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday art - Cherry blossoms

At the beginning of April, we saw many beautiful cherry blossoms in our neighbourhood.

After we played at the forest, we walked in our neighbourhood for looking at some cherry blossom trees.

We closely looked at the petals and we gently touched the petals and counted how many petals the one flower had.


 

 When we came back CM from the little walk, the winds made petals move on the ground.
It look like a moving pink carpet!!  Aegon tried to step on petals but they were moving so quickly!

 We started to draw the tree, and the children remembered may details.

 

And after we finished drawing the trunk and branches we added flowers. they made from squished little tissue squares.

A few children asked the teachers, " I need green tissues! " They noticed there aren't only flowers on the branches, but also tiny green leaves beside of cherry blossoms. 

One child noticed there were many hues of pink and so we added more variety of pink to the finished product.

 

Some of trees has very stout stems, some of trees had many branches. Through this experience I was reminded that it is very important to see and touch nature closely.

And I felt so lucky, that our school has a beautiful neighbourhood that gives the children more ideas to explore.